Louis C.K. Has Figured Out Why Our Kids Are Sad

Their love of learning is dying. And the only way to fix it is to listen to them.

Louis CK, the best living comedian and, in turn, the best late night guest there is, dropped by David Letterman's show last night. He wanted to talk with Dave about his TV show and, if he had the chance, about how standardized tests are making his children's lives unnecessarily sad.

And he does just that. He makes some excellent points.

But the most excellent point he makes about childhood and standardized testing isn't about childhood or standardized testing at all.

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Late in the interview, Louie tells the story of a flight he was about to take to Los Angeles. Once he boarded and sat down at his aisle seat, a woman with a baby approached him and told him how it was going to go: He would be sitting in the middle seat now, and she'd be sitting in the aisle.

Okay, Louie said. And then he just left the plane entirely.

He just went home. He didn't go to Los Angeles.

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"Whatever I wanted to do over there didn't get done, and it doesn't really matter," he says.

In an America where schooling is becoming nothing more than an attrition test, it's probably the most important lesson Louie has ever given to kids and adults alike:

You can just leave. You can just stop.

If a system or person with no regard for you is sucking the fun out of learning — if that system is making it harder for you to go to school every day — we should be working to fix the system.

If the system is making most children cry, that's not the fault of the student. It's not the fault of the teacher, either. It's the fault of a system that tries to accommodate everyone, but winds up helping no one.

Louis made his grievances against the culture of younger and younger standardized testing clear for the first time on Twitter earlier this week. He tweeted his kid's homework, an example of the overly complicated subtraction processes in the new Common Core worksheets, and told his daughter not to do it.

Then he turned it into a nice little bit for his Late Show appearance.

"It's called teaching to the test," he said. "They decided there's a new way kids should think — and we're gonna prove they're thinking it by having them pass these tests, or we burn the school down."

It's a humble and, yes, funny call for a discussion on a complex topic. Even still, C.K. was admonished for all of it in Newsweek yesterday.

"Staging scenes from Of Mice and Men isn't going to catch us up to China anytime soon," writes Alexander Nazaryan. "Nor are art projects or iPads."

Is catching up to China now the American ideal? Or is the American ideal making sure our kids — and the adults they will become — are healthy, happy, and want to learn?

The problem is the constant drive to "catch up" to the productivity of a country we don't want to be, and the childhoods we're sacrificing to feed a cynical and shortsighted competition.

John Warner, a writer at InsideHigherEd and an education expert, highlighted the most egregious example of it all this week. Attributing it to the rigors of standardized test reform, a New York school got rid of an annual show put on by Kindergartners. When asked why it was cancelled, the school's principal and four teachers wrote that it didn't aid in the mission of "preparing children for college and career."

"We have a joy deficit. A curiosity crisis," Warner writes. "How many of you have children crying over their homework? When did their interest in learning in school switch to the off position?"

We're not taking the time to teach our kids a love of learning. We're not treating our kids as people. We're grooming them as tools for a future economy. It's contributing to an infinite sadness loop in American schools -- and this generation of kids is getting the worst of it.

Here's what that loop looks like.

There is already a standardized testing culture that endorses a one-size-fits-all school system, and it prepares our kids for a single test on a Saturday morning when they are 17. If they do poorly on that test—the for-profit SAT—their opportunities for better careers in the next 40 to 60 years of their lives dwindle, and their desire to learn is diminished.

But instead of deemphasizing the worst part of a broken system, we've instead bet the house on it. Common Core standards have just added more anxiety-riddled, make-or-break tests at even younger ages, when kids should be at their freest and happiest.

In turn, this has led us to confuse late-blooming or generally rambunctious kids with children who need medical intervention. We've doled out ADHD drugs to teenage boys 37 percent more frequently than we did a decade ago.

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Instead of instilling a love of learning and a sense of wonder in our kids, we are dropping a bucket of knowledge on them and imploring them to remember all of it or else. Then we are asking them why they can't remember any of it. We are asking them why they are still struggling to catch up. We are asking them why they are still on their knees, picking up pieces from the bucket.

We are asking them why they are sad when we're the only ones who could possibly be making them that way.

Re-establishing our love of learning is about agency and Louis C.K., one of the most influential speakers in our culture right now, has a ton of it. It's what made him the best comedian we have, it's what has made him a great and empathetic thinker, and it's what has allowed him to access universal truths about ourselves.

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And that's why, sometimes, when he feels railroaded or overwhelmed, he just leaves.

If the idea of leaving the exit door open for our children sounds familiar, it's because it is.

It's because the most respected voice for children we'll ever have came up with it first.

In Fred Rogers' most famous public speech, his plea to Congress for continued funding in 1969, he recites this poem about "that good feeling of control which I feel that children need to know is there." Here's the end of it.

It's great to be able to stop when you've planned the thing that's wrong. And be able to do something else instead -- and think this song:

'I can stop when I want to. Can stop when I wish. Can stop, stop, stop anytime.

And what a good feeling to feel like this! And know that the feeling is really mine.

Know that there's something deep inside that helps us become what we can.

For a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.'

At the end of it, even cold, stubborn Congress awarded him the funding on the spot.

Louis C.K. doesn't want funding. He wants a discussion.

He wants his kids to love learning again. And that love of learning can only start when our kids know they can stop.